Hidde

LLMs don't hallucinate or lie, they ‘bullshit’, in the sense that the late philosopher Harry Frankfurt (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Frankfurt) defined it, explain Glasgow researchers in their recent paper: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5.pdf

It's crucial to replace phrases like ‘hallucinate’ or ‘lie’ with a word like ‘bullshit’. This is not to try and be witty. The wording, they say, shapes how investors, policymakers and general public think of these tools. Which in turn impacts the decisions they make about them.

Harry Frankfurt - Wikipedia

Jun 29, 2024 at 6:46pmWeb
Show threadHiddeJun 29, 2024

“The problem here isn't that large language models hallucinate, lie, or misrepresent the world in some way. It's that they are not designed to represent the world at all; instead, they are designed to convey convincing lines of text.”

The paper details Frankfurt's interesting distinction between ‘soft bullshit’ and ‘hard bullshit’, reasoning that ChatGPT is definitely the former and in some specific cases the latter.

Show threadOliver Pfleiderer 🇬🇱Jun 30, 2024
@hdv
The words hallucinate and lie humanifies LLMs - that's how the companies behind the systems like to frame them. They are not. So bullshit is a very good word for it imho.
Show threadHiddeJun 30, 2024
@LinHead yup that's the point the paper makes
Show threadOliver Pfleiderer 🇬🇱Jun 30, 2024
@hdv I read it and i think we should widely publish this. Almost none of the press gets it right at this moment. LLMs won't solve any problems, other kinds of so called ai might help with some.
The owners of the LLMs make problems.
Right on point:
https://youtu.be/TtVJ4JDM7eM
Honest Government Ad | AI

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Show threadErikPJun 30, 2024
@hdv @LinHead Probably Frankfurt had only humans in mind when writing about bullshitting. The authors repeatately make the point that LLMs does not care about anything, they do argue that LLMs bullshitt nonetheless.
They try to bridge that gap: ChatGPT produces texts independently, convincing readers of the truthiness of its statement. Therefore it bullshits. Interesting! Though I am not 100% convinced of that argument.
Show threadOliver Pfleiderer 🇬🇱Jun 30, 2024
@erikp @hdv
LLMs are far from independent in the words sense. They produce alone but from trained data and following at least some algorithm. And the producers try to make them look like humans by training them say things like sorry or have a nice day.
You might have a point with Frankfurt meaning humans - I still have to read the full text.
Show threadkætJun 30, 2024

@hdv Exactly. Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" is an excellent essay. (He wrote some other great things about a construction of free will based on second-order desires too. I've a book of his somewhere).

His choice of "bullshit" has been a blessing and a curse. If he'd coined a long, Latin/Greek nonsense word, no one would have known of his work and his writing would have been less clear.

On the other hand, we're left in a situation where the word "bullshit" has a precise philosophical definition which applies directly to LLM's but, because it's not "that kind of word" no one realises that the person calling "bullshit" is more rigorous than the hawkers who are choosing ten-dollar Latin/Greek words of their own microdosed invention.

Show threadkætJun 30, 2024

@hdv The important difference between "lying" or "hallucinating" and "bullshitting" is that an LLM bullshits even when it's telling the truth. To bullshit, all that is needed is to construct utterances with some goal which doesn't include concern for its underlying meaning (not least its truth).

Bullshitting isn't a problem with LLMs: it's their approach.

Show threadHiddeJun 30, 2024
@chiffchaff yeah it'd be interesting to know what would have happened had he chosen a different phrase… there's definitely many other books/papers that do that though. It's a shame folks don't study LLMs through an epistemological lense, but through more of a commercial or marketing lense
Show threadPerspectiveJun 30, 2024

@hdv an interesting read, thank you!

Turning LLM systems loose on the world makes about as much sense as believing anything Trump says.

There is no way LLMs can produce the intended result because they have no concept of what truth even is. As such, BS is a most appropriate designation for the output.

Speaking of the distinctions between BS, lies and the truth, this too is an interesting read ...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201808/what-is-truth

What Is Truth?

An overview of the philosophy of truth.

Psychology Today
Show threadPerspectiveJul 3, 2024
@hdv so, #Trump is a walking, talking LLM? 😉